Family Case

The short story is written by Julia Darling and was published in 2006. The theme is family relations, and how the only thing that keep people connected to their families are the blood and sometimes that is not even enough to keep a family together.

The mother is a bereavement counsellor, and the story takes place on her fortieth birthday. She does not like her job, because it makes her unhappy, listening to people and all their problems is very sad. She says she maybe wants to make jewellery instead. Although she hates her job and just wants to relax when she comes home, she likes to open a bottle of wine and lay on the sofa drinking and letting her shoes fall of, but her daughters prevent her from doing that. They fight a lot, and she tries to talk to them, but she does not like to get involved in their fight, you can see that in the text on page 10 and it says "she suddenly wished they had gone to the cinema and sat together in silent darkness", she just wants her daughters to stop fighting and start to love and accept. She also treats her daughters like patients, she pushes a box of tissues towards the girls like she does to her patients, but that is also a sign that she is stuck at her job, she has been doing it for such a long time that everything that comes with the job for example pushing the tissues has started being a part of her. In the restaurant she gets jealous on the table behind them, because there is a person who also celebrates his birthday, and the guests sing the birthday song for him, and her daughters do not do anything but argue. She also likes her daughter Rachel more than Flora, she never listens to Flora, and is more interested in what Rachel is saying and doing, and she always ends up screaming at Flora and takes side with Rachel.

Flora and Rachel's relationship is very hectic. They do not like each other very much, and they fight a lot. They fight about everything because they are each other complete contracts. Rachel is the neat and confident one she is brave, clever and tall and Flora is really messy, her room looks like a bloody bomb hit, she feels she lives in Rachel's shadow because their mom likes Rachel more than her, and because of all those things she feels that Rachel is superior, and therefore she needs to gets compliments to feel loved.

The story is written in third person, and because the narrator is omniscient the reader gets the story from different points of views. The story starts with Rachel who comes home and finds out her dress is missing, and then it changes to Flora who takes her sister's dress, and feels like she is on the top of the world. When they arrive to the restaurant it is the mom who is trying to make her daughters love her. In the last part of the story the reader gets an inside of all the women's thoughts, and there also is a flashback, where Flora tells Rachel and her mom what happened to the dress.

One of the symbols

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